Optimising Web Delivery

What is Squid?

Squid is a fully-featured HTTP/1.0 proxy which is almost (but not quite - we're getting there!)
a fully-featured HTTP/1.1 proxy.
Squid offers a rich access control, authorization and logging environment to develop web proxy
and content serving applications.
Squid offers a rich set of traffic optimization options, most of which are enabled by default
for simpler installation and high performance.

Where did Squid come from?

Squid is based on the Harvest Cache Daemon developed in the early 1990's. It was one of
two forks from the codebase after the Harvest project ran to completion. (The other fork
being what became Netapp's Netcache.)

The Squid project was funded by an NSF grant (NCR-9796082) which covered research into caching
technologies. The ircache funding ran out a few
years later and the Squid project continued through volunteer donations and the
occasional commercial investment.

Squid is currently being developed by a handful of individuals donating their time
and effort to building current and next generation content caching and delivery
technologies. An ever-growing number of companies use Squid to save on their
internet web traffic, improve performance, deliver faster browsing to their end-clients
and provide static, dynamic and streaming content to millions of internet users
worldwide.

Who uses Squid today?

A good question! Many of you are using Squid without even knowing it! Some companies have
embedded Squid in their home or office firewall devices, others use Squid in large-scale
web proxy installations to speed up broadband and dialup internet access. Squid is being
increasingly used in content delivery architectures to deliver static and streaming
video/audio to internet users worldwide.